Alongside Google's initiative to have Android Pay be a standalone mobile payment solution for e-commerce sites, it has also today announced a partnership that will let Android Pay users use their payment methods anywhere that Visa Checkout and Mastercard Masterpass are accepted. That means any site that has integrated with Visa Checkout or Masterpass is now available for you to pay via Android Pay on your phone once you link your accounts.
About as simple as online payments can get.
No more remembering individual logins for just one payment service or the other — if the site supports Visa Checkout or Masterpass, you'll be able to pay with a couple taps and an authentication of your fingerprint on your phone. You won't have to add your credit card numbers to another service or remember any more passwords.
The best part about the integration is that e-commerce sites don't have to do any additional work to get it up and running either. Everything is handled on the Android Pay end. Buttons on the sites will be changed automatically, and soon every retailer that takes Visa Checkout or Masterpass will also be compatible with Android Pay.
The integration, according to Google, will be all finished early in 2017 so we unfortunately have to wait for a little while. But this integration with the massive presence of Visa Checkout and Masterpass adds a gigantic number of retailers much faster than Google could have done with Android Pay on its own. Keep on the lookout for the integration in the coming months.
